Thursday, September 14, 2006

it was the funeral yesterday of one of the most fabulous women I've met. Unfortunately, I couldn't go which I'm really sad about. She was 92 and had decided that she'd had enough of life, so she left a note behind the mantelpiece, drove her little motor-scooter down to the Thames, climbed over a wall and threw herself in - it seems such a violent and desperate end that's it's quite unbearable, although quite in keeping with her character. She always had said that if she died whilst visiting friends at the other end of the country, they were to prop her up in the car and take her back to London and leave her on the doorstep.

She was baking and making clothes right up until a few weeks ago. Once she came into my sister's house with a very fashionable knitted cap with a peak which she had made. When we asked how she made the peak she said she'd stuffed a sanitary towel (clean one mind) into it and sewed it up.

It was her job in the second world war to set the siren off to alert people that bombs were being dropped over Fulham. However, more often than not if it happened in the middle of the night she said she didn't bother as she thought it would be a shame to wake them.

Some time ago her son worked for Air Canada and her house was carpeted thus:

economy - up the stairsbusiness - in her bedroomfirst - in the loungeand bucket seats in the kitchen which were so high up your feet wouldn't touch the floor oh and she made herself a whole trouser suit from the blankets.